Airbus has released a variety of new offerings aimed toward helping airline and MRO customers during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The solutions include a new app and capabilities for its Skywise data platform, a distance learning solution for maintenance courses and a medevac conversion for passenger aircraft catered toward transport of COVID-19 patients.
With so much of the world’s fleet grounded during the pandemic, the OEM has released a new geospatial app for Skywise to help airlines more easily decide where to store each individual aircraft, and in which order. Airlines can use the app to tag their grounded aircraft and virtually park them into various locations at airports and stations, such as in hangars, at gates and on taxiways. The app can be used to rapidly extract contextual data, such as an aircraft’s age, its latest and next maintenance checks, and last major assembly overhaul.
According to Airbus, the geospatial app simplifies tracking down and knowing which aircraft are stored in which location, as well as which maintenance tasks need to be carried out to uphold airworthiness. It also says the app will prove useful for airlines once passenger demand returns, since it can help airlines solve the challenges of identifying the optimal aircraft to bring back into service and which maintenance tasks need to be performed.
Credit: Airbus
Airbus has also deployed additional capabilities for its Skywise Reliability offering for automating reliability reporting, called Skywise Reliability Premium. According to Airbus, Premium enables airlines to identify and prioritize technical issues across their fleets to save time by providing the “right first time solution” and enabling easy assessment of its effectiveness. In the pandemic environment, Airbus says Premium will help airlines reduce engineering analysis time “from three weeks to three clicks” by implementing the correct service bulletins during aircraft downtime, focusing on issues with the biggest cost impact, identifying their root cause and enabling airlines to take relevant maintenance action.
On the training side, Airbus Training Services has set up and obtained EASA approval for a synchronous distance learning solution for maintenance courses. Airbus says the solution was developed to provide opportunity to customers in the wake of travel restrictions by enabling them to perform theoretical maintenance training locally. Led by a remote Airbus instructor in real-time and supervised by a local Airbus exam proctor, customers will be able to participate in local examination sessions—where Airbus stations are available—for theoretical certifying maintenance courses and non-certifying courses. Airbus says that once travel restrictions are lifted and whenever practical training is required, the training effort will be limited to organizing these practical sessions.
Lastly, Airbus has developed a solution for quickly converting passenger aircraft into medevac configuration for customers looking to transport COVID-19 patients. Developed over six weeks’ time by a multi-functional team from Airbus’ Commercial Aircraft, Helicopters, and Defence and Space units, the solutions are based on the A330 and A340 platforms to carry intensive care patients over long-range distances. Airbus was supported by the French Direction Générale de la Santé (part of the French Ministry of Health), which provided all the medical specifications associated with COVID-19 patients in intensive and low care. According to Airbus, the concept has been fine-tuned and it can now offer customers wishing to perform medevac operations a “mature solution.”
The OEM’s A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT), derived from the commercial A330 platform, was already being used by the French Air Force to provide medevac transport for COVID-19 patients since March 18. Airbus says the A330 MRTT is well-suited for medevac operations, with the capacity to carry up to 130 NATO stretchers. In its “light medevac” configuration, medical beds can be installed above designated fold-down seats and stowed in the lower cargo compartments during troop transport. Its “intensive medevac” configuration, in which critical care modules are installed to replicate an intensive care unit in the air, is the format being used to transport COVID-19 patients.
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